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TV: A season of spinoffs

We may have more time in the world of How I Met Your Mother after all. Deadline announced Wednesday that a spinoff of How I Met Your Mother is in the works.

CBS is in talks with HIMYM producer 20th Century Fox TV for the spinoff series, which hails from HIMYM creators and executive producers Carter Bays and Craig Thomas.

The spinoff would take a female spin on the original idea of the show: A story chronicling the journey a woman takes to meet her future husband. It’s How I Met Your Father. (Read that in a Ron Howard voice for comedic effect)

I’m not too crazy about this news overall, but the best part of this leak is that the spinoff would feature a new group of friends in New York. It would not be tied to any of the original HIMYM characters.

According to Deadline reporter Nellie Andreeva, “I hear the new characters could be introduced in the HIMYM series finale, and Ted, Barney, Marshall, Lily and Robin’s favorite hangout, McLaren’s Pub, may be featured in the new show, serving as a link between the two gangs.”

All I have to say is, “No, thank you.”

We can drone on and on about the economics side of the entertainment world and how HIMYM is one of the few very well performing shows left on CBS, but beyond that, I don’t understand why people don’t know when to let things live on with its original legacy. HIMYM is known for Ted, Marshall, Lily, Barney and Robin. Period. While the spinoff may feature new characters, it is still going to be compared to the original, and that never turns out well.

Furthermore, the creators can say they will be very different characters, but look what happened to Glee. There are only so many characters one can write about in a high school setting and look at all of the failed attempts to reincarnate the original characters. Kitty and Bree are nothing in comparison to Quinn, and I could just list these examples for days. On the HIMYM end of things, the new gang in the spinoff is not going to be able to live up to the original, and ultimately, it may be morphed into a copy of the original.

Case in point: I do not want this HIMYM spinoff.

How I Met Your Father is just one of the many announced spinoffs planned for the future.

20th Century Fox TV is discussing having a spinoff of ABC’s hit Modern Family. One concept is show built around Rob Riggle’s Gil Thorpe, Phil Dunphy’s (Ty Burrell) real estate rival.

A Walking Dead spinoff is planned for 2015 on AMC. The CW is planning to have a spinoff of its hit Arrow with a show focusing on another DC Comics hero, The Flash. And CBS has another spinoff of NCIS, this time set in New Orleans. Not to mention the Breaking Bad spinoff, Better Call Saul, is being prepped for 2014.

Even this fall season featured a spinoff of ABC’s Once Upon a Time, which was cleverly titled Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.

Could these spinoffs just be another Joey or The Golden Palace incident? Or could they reign with the likes of Laverne and Shirley, Angel or Frasier?